RIBA Bookshops

This polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its influence on society. The author'score contention is that 'sustainability', manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon: in effect, he argues, its bi-partisan appeal has depressed critical engagement and neutered politics.


A well argued humanist alternative to the present conformist consensus - a very persuasive contribution by a thoughtful subversive.
Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at University of Kent, and author of Politics of Fear and Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone

A much needed diagnosis of the bleak anti-human pathology sometimes described as environmentalism
Dominic Lawson, columnist for The Independent

Austin Williams has a gift for lobbing well-directed grenades.
Philippe Legrain, author 'Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them'

Austin Williams has a point; almost anything can be made to sound virtuous if cloaked in greenery: eco-friendly terrorism, perhaps, or low-energy land mines, or carbon-neutral ethnic cleansing...
Jaspar Gerard, Daily Telegraph

This is certainly an antidote to the pessimism and anti-humanism that is now the dominant unofficial ideology in the West.
Pan Pantziarka, London Book Review

More rarely, and increasingly from the fringes or from outside of the university, you get a positive vision of humanity, such as that in Austin Williams's The Enemies of Progress.
Dennis Hayes, Times Higher Education

For those excited about the potential of humanity to shape the world, Williams book is a refreshing and useful polemic.
Tony Gilland, spiked-online